Increasing School Diversity as a Means of Reducing Collective Hysteria in School Choices

• In Event: Educational Research for Revealing Conflicts Derived From Different Ideologies in China

Abstract

How much choice should parents have in terms of where to educate their children is a highly controversial issue in Chinese public policy debates. Equal access to public education is set up as a guiding principle in China for over 30 years and it has been strengthened in recent years under public pressure. Consequently, children are required to receive their compulsory education based on residence. However, some parents hope to break the institutional barrier in various ways, including paying extra money and seeking special privileges. The tension between the government’s efforts on education equality and the parents’ expectations for choosing a qualified education for their children becomes worse when there is only one child in a family and large differences among public schools. A collective hysteria is then accumulated and manifested in increasing transaction costs (searching costs paid by parents and costs for preventing corruption in recruitment every year) as well as a rapidly growing number of students who choose to study abroad. The objectives of this paper is: (1) to address the collective hysteria in school choices in China by analyzing the data collected in 10 cities; (2) to examine the possibility of rejecting the collective hysteria and reach the cooperative state based on the Snowdrift Theory.

This paper examines the collective hysteria regarding school choice from the perspective of institutional evolution. The principle of equal education opportunity has been introduced with the expansion of public education in China but the Chinese parents’ common beliefs on education have not yet embraced the envisioned state. Based on the Snowdrift Model in Evolutionary Game Theory, diversification can be used to break the collective hysteria and reach a collaborative outcome.

Two research methods are used in this paper. Statistical analysis on the data collected in 10 cities in China is used to describe the collective hysteria while the dynamic analysis of the evolutionary process is used to determine the possibility and pre-conditions of the collaboration.

The substantiated conclusion of this paper is that there is an increasing amount of collective hysteria on choosing schools in China. The diversification of educational institutions is one way of reducing the tension between the government’s efforts on ensuring education equality and the traditional meritocracy-oriented education beliefs in China. Meanwhile, populism and politically correct sentiments in public education are identified as challenges that the diversification strategy faces.

The process of improving the education system is generally viewed at the macro-level in term of gross and structural change. This paper tries to describe the reform process of the education system in China in term of institutional evolution in which consensus is reached through collective bargains and political compromises. Collective behavioral analysis at the micro-level is then introduced to examine the developmental process of the education system as well.

Authors

• Xiaodong Zeng, Beijing Normal University

• Da Li, Beijing Normal University